A Tale of Two Figurations
The distorted resemblances of Christ’s Transfiguration and Disfiguration.
An edited version of the message I gave at the Good Friday service of Red Mountain Community Church (EFCA).
In which event in the life of Jesus do we most clearly see his glory?
Which event or moment or happening in Jesus' life most clearly shows us who he is? Where do we look if we want to witness him most clearly revealed?
Maybe the way to think about it is to ask, is Jesus' glory most clearly revealed at the "high" point of his life–his transfiguration, where the curtain is pulled back and The Son's glory shines more staggeringly through? Or, paradoxically, is it at the "low" point of his life–his crucifixion, where he is brutally tortured, shamed, and killed? Is it one of these events–the poles of Jesus life and ministry?
Disimilar-Similarity
What is so incredible about these two events in Mark’s Gospel, is that they resemble each other while looking so different. They clash against each other in just about every way, and yet the similarities in how Mark presents the two events are striking. The details Mark includes in the accounts mirror each other, and yet contrast sharply as they do. Like a house of mirrors, the crucifixion gives a reflection of the transfiguration, but it is a horrifically distorted one.
When Jesus is transfigured, he takes his disciples up onto a hill | When Jesus is crucified, he ascends another hill, Golgotha, which means the place of the skull.
When Jesus is transfigured, his clothes become radiant and intensely white, so white that Mark says "as no launderer on earth could bleach them." | When Jesus is crucified, his clothes are stripped from him and lots are cast by Roman soldiers to see who gets to keep what.
When Jesus is transfigured, there are two men with him also being transfigured who encourage him: Moses and Elijah | When Jesus is crucified, there are two men with him also being crucified who deride him: criminals.
When Jesus is transfigured, he becomes so radiantly white that those there can barely see due to the brightness | When Jesus is crucified, darkness covers the whole land for three hours so that those who are there can barely see due to the darkness.
When Jesus is transfigured, Elijah is physically present and talks with Jesus | When Jesus is crucified, Elijah pops up again, but this time he is only talked about by the Jews watching on about whether Jesus is trying to call him to come and save him from what he is experiencing.
When Jesus is transfigured, he is accompanied by three disciples, Peter James, and John | When Jesus is crucified, he is also accompanied by three disciples, but this time it's none of the 12, they’ve all abandoned him, even the three who saw him Transfigured who had the most reason to remain faithful are no where to be found. But Jesus is still accompanied by three of his disciples, maybe three of the most unlikely for his day: Mary Magdalene, his mother Mary, and Salome.
When Jesus is Transfigured, God the Father speaks blessing over Jesus, God The Son, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” | When Jesus is crucified, he, the Son, cries out to the Father in anguish, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
These two scenes are foils of one another. They are meant to be held up to one another and compared and contrasted. And when you do, you see that in their details they are strikingly similar yet starkly different.
They are the seeming high point and low point of the life of Christ at this point in the story. There is no higher of highs than Jesus' glorious transfiguration and there is no lower of lows than his miserable death.
In both something unmistakable happens to Jesus' figure. In the one he is Transfigured into breathtaking splendor, in the other, he is Disfigured to the point of being unrecognizable.
An Irreconcilable Difference
Which of these events shows the true identity of Jesus most unmistakably? Which reveals him for who he is most clearly? His Transfiguration, or his Disfiguration?
The answer is of course, at least in one sense, both. Like anything Jesus does, they both reveal his glory in their own ways.
And yet what is interesting is the most glaring dissimilarity between these two episodes. In two episodes that mirror each other so much, there is one detail that is irreconciliable between them. One thing that try as you might, you just can't connect the two on. And it's this: One of them is purposefully private, the other is purposefully public.
When Jesus goes to be transfigured, he intentionally leaves behind 9 of his disciples. At the moment of his seemingly clearest revelation of his glory as God the Son, he purposefully only takes 3 disciples with him. He makes it exclusive. Besides his temptation in the wilderness, it is the smallest audience he has for any event in his ministry. And not only doe he only take along 3 disciples, he charges them at the end to not tell a soul about what they have seen. So it's not just that the viewing party is limited, but they are sworn to secrecy so that no one else will know what has happened. The Transfiguration of Jesus is a private affair.
The crucifixion on the other hand, totally public. Jesus is not taken out back and done away with quietly in the night. He is not killed like John the Baptist in a chamber away from the crowds. He is publicly hung for any and all passerbys to see. Anyone who has a sick craving to witness such a thing can, free of charge. Gentiles and Jews, Roman Soldiers and Jewish scribes, all were literally welcome on that day at the foot of the cross to witness Jesus's heinous death. Jesus crucifixion is a public screening.
Private and Public. Tell no one, let all look on. These two clashing details cannot be brought together in these scenes that mirror one another so closely. So, why?
Why would God in his providence select one to be invitation only and one to be general admission? And why this one private and that one public? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
This, I believe, is how we come to the real answer to the original question: In which event in the life of Jesus do we most clearly see his glory?
Christ’s Paradoxical, Preeminent, & Peculiar Glory
The answer, again, is surely both. Both the transfiguration and the crucifixion reveal Christ's glory in their own ways. And yet if we ask which one does "most", I am convinced it is the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. The disfiguration of Jesus, not his transfiguration, is where his glory is most clearly beheld. It is where we see him most clearly for who he truly is. Which is precisely why it is public. And I don't think it's just me. I think Mark agrees based on how he writes his gospel.
Mark is the shortest gospel. And he is known for his brevity. In the stories he includes that show up in Matthew and Luke, Mark often includes the least amount of detail. But when it comes to the crucifixion, it is almost comical how much detail Mark includes in comparison to what he has done up to now. He gives 20 verses of minute detail to the death of Jesus, something he never does with any other episode in his telling of the gospel.
Why? Because this is the moment all he has written before has been leading to. Jesus' death is the climax and ultimate point of Mark's narrative of the life of Jesus. Everything else serves the purpose of highlighting the crucifixion of Jesus. Including the transfiguration of Jesus.
And it's not only in how he writes about the crucifixions. How Mark writes the narrative of the transfiguration points the reader to the fact that the Transfiguration is secondary to the crucifixion.
Right before the Transfiguration takes place, Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to suffer and die. He tells them the crucifixion is coming. And the very first thing Mark quotes Jesus as saying following the Transfiguration is that he must suffer and die. He tells them of his crucifixion again.
The Transfiguration is couched between these two statements of Jesus about his death. The transfiguration is sandwiched between Jesus speaking about his crucifixion. Why? Why does does Jesus do this?
Because otherwise his disciples, and us with them, might be tempted to think the Transfiguration is the moment. When we think of glory we think of the peaks of things, we think of the high points, the greatest successes, the mountain top experiences, we think of the dazzling and breathtaking. We think of glam and grandeur. And the Transfiguration is all of that and then some. It fits and even surpasses our framework for the glorious. Because of how spectacular it is, human knowledge tells us that this, the Transfiguration, is the big reveal of Christ's glory.
But it’s not. And so Jesus bookends the Transfiguration with statements about what actually is, in an effort to point his disciples and us to what we would never expect is actually center stage: the crucifixion of Jesus.
The privateness and publicness of the transfiguration and crucifixion point us to which event is the main point, which takes precedence, which is primary. And just to make sure we don’t miss it, Jesus himself brings up his death right before and right after the transfiguration so that we don’t mistake which event is preeminent.
The transfiguration is private because it is not the point. The crucifixion is public precisely because it is–because only in it is Jesus's glory most clearly on display. The last event we would ever expect to most reveal his glory is the very event that does.
Nowhere Else to Look
But why is it that the crucifixion puts Jesus’s glory most clearly on display? Because who Jesus is cannot be understood apart from what he came to do. Or to say it positively, you can only understand Jesus for he is by seeing him doing what he came to do.
In Mark 10:45 Jesus says "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
To give his life. As a ransom. That is why he came. To seek and save the lost. To hand over his life as a payment for many.
Who Jesus is can only be known in his doing what he came to do. And what he came to do was to win sinners back to God. And so the Transfiguration and every other event in the life of Jesus simply cannot reveal him fully because what he came to do does not happen there. It only happens in one place: At the cross.
At the cross, sinners are won back to God. At the cross, the lost are finally found. At the cross, the enslaved are ransomed. At the cross the insurmountable debt we owe is paid in full. At the cross the just wrath of God is satisfied because Jesus drinks the cup of it bone dry. At the cross, stains of shame are washed as white as Christ's own clothes at his transfiguration, as white "as no launderer on earth could bleach them." At the cross, totally apart from anything they do or don't do, sinners are made spotless, blameless, and innocent before God. At the cross and the cross alone, Jesus's glory is most clearly revealed because he is doing what he came to do and he cannot be known apart from it.
And he came to do precisely this: to drink God's wrath toward sin on behalf of sinners so that they, so that you and I, do not have to. He came to take the place of sinners so that we might, at no cost to ourselves, take a place as sons and daughters of God. He came to be rejected that we might be accepted. He came to become poor that we might be made rich in him. He came to be condemned that we might be exonerated. He came to bear our sin before God that we might be clothed in his perfection before God. He came to die so that we can live. That is his glory and it cannot be seen anywhere else.
And so it is paradoxically in his seemingly lowest point that he is beheld at his highest. It is in his uttermost shame that his glory shines most brightly. It is in his purposefully public death that Jesus's glory is most clearly seen because in it he is doing what he came to do: bring sinners back to God.
There is one final distorted resemblance between the two episodes that reveals why it is the crucifixion that manifests Christ's glory more than anything else. It's the responses Mark includes of those witnessing the events.
In the Transfiguration account, after the event is over and the disciples and Jesus are walking down the hill, the disciples are hung up on one thing and it isn’t Jesus, it’s Elijah and how he fits into all of this.
The disciples still don’t get it. They aren't overwhelmed with who Jesus is. They aren't in shock and awe over what they have just seen of him. They still do not see him fully though they have seen more of his sheer glory than anyone else at this point. They are sidetracked by marginal matters rather than seeing fully who Jesus is. They still do not see him clearly. The Transfiguration does not open their eyes to him.
But at the crucifixion, the last words spoken at the cross are spoken by a Roman centurion who, overwhelmed with what he has witnessed, declares, "Truly this was the Son of God!" Unlike the transfiguration, at his crucifixion Jesus is finally seen to be who he truly is, even by one who would have been the least likely to understand. Only at the crucifixion is Jesus finally seen and understood by someone for who he truly is, because what he had come to do is finally finished.
Jesus's true glory cannot be know apart from what he came to do. And only at his disfiguration does he finally complete it.
When Jesus is Transfigured, his full glory, while seen in greater measure, remains hidden because he has not done what he came to do and so the witnesses remain blind to his true identity | When Jesus is crucified, who he is in all his peculiar glory is finally and fully on display because he is doing what he came to do: be sacrificed to save sinners, and the last person you would ever expect has his eyes opened to him.
Jesus's glory is only found when we look at him doing what he came to do. And when we do our eyes are opened to see what the Centurion saw. And what we see there is this:
That the One of the Transfiguration is the One of the Disfiguration. The One who stands with Moses and Elijah, is the One who hangs with the condemned. The One who is accompanied by his closest friends is the One who is abandoned by them at the hour of his greatest need. The One who shines in dazzling white is the One dripping red with his own blood. The One who holds all power and authority in his hands is the One who allows nails to be driven through them. The One who spoke the universe into existence is the One spat on by those he made and came to save. The One who knew no sin is the One who becomes sin for us. The One who gives life itself is the One who tastes death himself so that we don’t have to.
This is his glory, that the One who is glorious in splendor beyond our comprehension, the One who needs nothing, the One who is perfectly content in himself, the One who is the beginning an the end of all things, the One who justly has wrath towards sin is the very One who willingly suffers and dies under his own wrath. All to win sinners back to himself free of charge.
What god is like this? Who else's glory holds a candle to this Glorious Crucified One? What else can we say as we stare on at the crucifixions except, "Truly this man was the Son of God, slain for me!”
zch